Higher End DACs

Unless your reference is unamplified acoustic event, there is no universal truth. The first poor performance in the chain is microphone choice and then placement...
your Mac stuff is fine, you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Go listen to and better yet borrow a variety of DAC’s and or streamers.

An activity I strongly recommend, especially for those who already know it all, is an aural workout session at 2L Recordings ( The Nordic Sound ) downloads bench - many formats with same microphones and placement..,,,

My whole system is *only* a $20k system, but the Tidal difference between MQA and non-mqa in my system is very noticeable to me.
If OP has any plans to ever stream Tidal, I stick by my statement that not having a dac that supports MQA would be a dealbreaker, especially at these levels of cash outlay.
That is not to say that other things don’t sound good, but come on, if he/she talking about spending $20k plus on a digital unit, do you really want to miss out on Tidal’s top sound quality offerings?

Hi @kren0006

What DAC are you using??

Please let’s not turn this thread in a MQA debate. The MQA proponents and detractors are strongly entrenched in their own respective bunkers, and such debates can only lead to flame wars